Mother's Proverbs / Blood Red Bricks by Carol Park

Mother’s Proverbs

            Blood is thicker than water. Sticks and stones . . .

 

Billows surge—higher than our old home—and pummel still

taller rocks. Big sister, a single text in two years between us— 

 

I stopped the words to hush the sister angst—so it seemed. 

Christmas comes and the chasm taunts again. Farther down 

 

the shore a tide pool stillness suspends my circling thoughts. Wait.

Then steely sprays of high tide wreck the silence—You, sister

 

reappear. I long—I think, my fault—if only I . . . but dark relics

submerge in a whitecapped sister sea. Despite what our mother said,

 

blood doesn’t stick—it’s no cement. Typhoon words don’t vanish. I beg

for a bridge over the rage and sound. Hyades—the nymph sisters—

 

give no answer but transports me to a graceful doe kissing her fawns.

Saplings circle a succoring tree. No need for sister’s voice. I’ll be

 

Queen Anne’s lace with tender head high adoring her sister’s.

marsh. I hike smooth paths through towering berry bushes—sisters

 

on each side—stems so needled. I pluck fruit sweet and tart—

sustenance—memories of us sisters picking fruit at Mother’s side.

Blood Red Bricks

 

We see things not as they are but as we are.

Anais Nin

 

A wall mortared tight, barring

            any sense of self or agency.

 

A deep well of water—once 

            a sisterhood now toxins

 

turn it poisonous. Or call it

            wounds from a common mother,

 

still crying out for salve and bandage.

            That small tin box painted with

 

a red cross we would both finger as if

            rattling Band-Aids were sufficient

 

remedy. God, stitch up these jagged

            cuts in us both, and between us.

 

Is there a jackhammer powerful enough

            to fracture my strange sense of you

 

and you of me? What bloody red, impenetrable

            bricks forestall elusive peace.

Carol Park teaches, in a jail, hikes and reads. Her poetry appears in SLANT, Minerva Rising, The Haight Ashbury Journal, Black Fox Literary, MiGoZine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Broadkill Review, California Quarterly, and New Contexts. Kelsay Press will publish her book, Songs Sharp and Tender, in fall 2024.